Enhancements to Credit
Management(FI)

Description

Overview

1. Positioning the credit control area.

2. Distributed credit management.

3. Payment guarantee management.

Description

1. Positioning the credit control area.

The credit control area is no longer a combination of company
codes, but can be entered in the line item or determined in an
order from order data, customer data, or a user exit. This means
that the control area can be used flexibly as an internal control
instrument, and data that needs to be posted in the same company
code for accounting reasons need no longer be managed in the same
control area.

The control area additionally allocated to the company code is
only a default and is used, for example, for crediting commitments
for those incoming payments to the customer that cannot be
allocated. Otherwise, the credit amount is deducted in the control
area in which it was also added. As before, this is the case for
every payment.

There is an additional check table of the control areas that are
permitted for each company code.

For all item-related checks that take place at control area
level, only data which has been posted to this control area will be
included.

Data from all the company codes which are allowed in the
relevant control area is used for all evaluations that take place
at company code level (e.g. payment history, dunning data).

2. Distributed credit management

A scenario is supported which allows several decentralized SD
systems to operate active credit management against a central FI
system.

An A/R summary is created in the FI system for
this purpose. This contains all the information on a credit
management account (in a control area) that is necessary for the
credit check in SD. This information is in compressed form.

A program which should be run periodically creates this A/R
summary and sends it to the decentralized SD systems via the ALE
customer distribution model. Methods from the Business Object
Repository are used to do this. The data is received by the
decentralized SD systems and stored in the database. The locally
called checks are not then run against the database, which is only
a reflection of local activities, but against the A/R summary and
therefore against all the open items. If the A/R summary is out of
date, you can use the Remote Function Call to update the data in
the FI system.

Even in a non-distributed system, it may be beneficial to run
the SD credit check against this A/R summary. The repeated reading
of open items is then exchanged for the repeated reading of the
results of one of these inquiries.

The data determined in this way from the A/R summary can be
integrated in the credit overview in line layout variants. This
makes it possible to identify those credit management accounts for
which the credit check will report an error when the next incoming
orders are made.

3. Payment guarantee management

As well as the total of open receivables (= not guaranteed for
payment, therefore at your own risk), a second total of receivables
guaranteed for payment is recorded in credit management.

Items can be guaranteed for payment in different ways and are
then no longer at your own risk:

By an export credit insurance

By a letter of credit

By using a payment card

The payment guarantee amount is produced from a payment
guarantee procedure defined in SD. It can include a percentage of
the invoice amount.

For example, an amount of 600 USD can be guaranteed for a
receivable of 800 USD using a letter of credit. This has the
following effect in credit management:

Total of receivables (at own risk): before 4,500 USD, after
4,700 USD.

Total of guaranteed receivables: before 300 USD, after 900
USD.

The amount of a receivable guaranteed for payment is, like the
credit amount of a receivable, in the line item and can therefore
be displayed in the document display, the line item display, and
the credit overview (with line layout variants).

Change system parameters in customizing

For further information on Customizing for Credit Management,
see the Implementation Guide for Financial Accounting under
Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable -> Credit
Management -> Credit Control Account . See the
activities
"Allocate permitted credit control areas to company code" and"Make
basic settings for credit management" .

The field Payment guarantee amount
(field name ABSBT) can be included in line layout variants.